Friday, February 17, 2017

One Sentence Summaries About Various Comic Publishers AKA I'm Being a Huge Smart-Ass Today

This Will Be Fun!
I've done one-sentence summaries of comics, music, etc. How about for fun I do some summaries describing a bunch of the comic-book publishers we know and love/hate? This will either be hilarious or just piss everyone off. Maybe both.

Summary Time!Marvel
At this point it is constant dull events and reboots with thankfully some fun lesser-known titles .

DC
I had to admit I was wrong when Rebirth turned out to be legitimately great and boosted sales immensely.

Vertigo (An imprint of DC)
Does this even still exist outside of some reprints?

Fantagraphics
Home of the literary and high-brow comics that gather immense acclaim.

Eros (an imprint of Fantagraphics)
Home of the hardcore porn comics that bring-in enough money to keep publishing the high-brow comics.

Avatar Press
Used to do mostly ultraviolent and silly bad-girl-art comics, now does ultraviolent and clever comics.

Boundless (An imprint of Avatar Press)
The publisher for if you miss the bad-girl comics from the old Avatar and love you some guilty-pleasure cheesecake mixed with surprisingly solid storytelling.

Image Comics
Slowly taking over the market with a stellar assortment of books and turning, "The big 2," into more-so, "The big 3."IDW
A mixture of off-kilter titles and huge licensed properties ("My Little Pony") seems to working great for them, but all I really want is some new, "Popbot."

Top Shelf Comix (Now an imprint of IDW)
I've always thought of Top Shelf Comix as a quirkier version of Fantagraphics, which may or may not be accurate, but that's how I see it.

Dark Horse Comics
A solid publisher that has had to really struggle for relevance since losing some major IPs like, "Star Wars."

Drawn and Quarterly
You read this because you think Fantagraphics is still too mainstream and/or like the creators who seem to only release their stuff through D&Q.

Alternative Comics
You read this because you think Drawn and Quarterly also is still too mainstream (and because there are some good books too, of course).

Birdcage Bottom Books
You read this because you also think even Alternative comics are too mainstream a publisher--and again, because this publisher has some great books.

Bluewater Comics/Stormfront Comics/Storm
Not so much a publisher as a physical manifestation of the question, "How could you make a company that just puts out absolute garbage, treats creators horribly, and doesn't think to use Google to make sure one of its name-change ideas isn't also the name of a popular Neo-Nazi website?"

ComixTribe
This smaller-press publisher puts out some of the weirdest books around, and I mean that in a good way!

Aspen Comics
They've published that, "Fathom," comic, but otherwise I haven't really read them enough to form a solid opinion.

Zenescope
Puts out a variety of stuff, but 99% of people know them for those, "Grim Fairy Tales," that feature super-sexualized covers and apparently legitimately good stories.

NoBrow
Publish more graphic novels and picture-books as opposed to single-issue comics, but still deserve mention because much of what they create is so darn good.

Broadsword Comics
A small company that focuses mainly on their book, "Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose," which I always enjoy reading.

Amigo Comics
A good company if you like, fantasy, horror, and sci-fi.

BOOM!
Started out doing strange little stories and the occasional media property, but have grown into an absolute powerhouse of solid titles

Dynamite Entertainment
A publisher who puts out an interesting mish-mash of licensed properties, original stuff, and whatever Alex Ross feels like drawing this month.

Black Mask
Besides being plagued by awful publishing delays on a number of their books they always are releasing some really good and edgy stuff.

Action Lab/Danger ZoneEntertainment
A publisher of fun kids comics who also puts-out super-sexual comics featuring a, "Zombie Tramp," because variety is the spice of life.

Alterna
A little publisher with some quality stuff.

Scout Comics
A smaller and newer publisher that inexplicably has a number of their titles getting quite, "Hot," in the marketplace.

Bongo Comics
This is the publisher you read if you want comics about, "The Simpsons," "Futurama," or good ol' Spongebob.

Oni Press
Has been around for awhile, has some big-name titles, but also puts out an interesting assortment of strange stuff.

Devil's Due/1First Comics
A reborn-publisher/merger that puts out a few cool titles.

Aftershock Comix
A relatively fresh publisher who has had some big hits that have gotten a lot of attention.

Valiant
They went against common-sense and brought back a bunch of mostly-forgotten 1990's comics (and some new stuff) to a great deal of success--it probably helps their stuff is all quite good!

Summaries Done!
I have now summarized all the publishers that immediately came to my mind and hope you enjoyed reading my brief thoughts about each of them.